Peter
Henderson & Company
Peter Henderson and James Henderson

Reprint of Henderson's 1887 catalog cover, on metal,
displayng the company motto: "Everything for the Garden".

Courtesy, C.A. Karnoutsos.

Peter Henderson
& Co. Advertisement
circa 1916 featuring the trademark image of the gentleman
gardener and the slogan: "Everything for the Garden."
This image was frequently used in Henderson print advertisements commonly found in newspapers.

Courtesy, C.A. Karnoutsos

Above: "The Greenhouse Establishment of Peter Henderson, Jersey City Heights".

One of Jersey City's most unusual
and colorful industries in the mid-nineteenth century was market gardening.
Carriages, and later trucks, carting off shipments of fresh, locally
grown produce and cut flowers to nearby markets were once a commonplace
sight on the streets of the city. Greenhouses and small gardens made
use of undeveloped tracts of land across the otherwise industrial community
and enterprising horticulturists employed intensive cultivation techniques
to produce a wide variety of flowers, ornamental plants, and vegetables.
Easily forgotten, these gardening operations contributed to the unique
mix of Jersey City's diverse economy even though they left no notable
landmark buildings or other physical traces of their activities.

Peter and James Henderson,
brothers and immigrants from Scotland, founded what ultimately became
two prosperous gardening businesses in Jersey City. Their companies
flourished by specializing in different niches in the market gardening
trade and by adopting cooperative business relationships with each other.
James Henderson, the older of the two, established a separate truck
farm for vegetables in the Greenville
section of Jersey City. James' own potential was cut short by his early
death, but his brother Peter came to be known to his peers as "the
father of horticulture and ornamental gardening" in the United
States.

A longtime Jersey City resident
and an accomplished entrepreneur, Peter viewed himself as a seedsman
but gradually took an interest in ornamental gardening. Henderson's
gardening firm and catalog company based in Jersey City and New York
lasted over a hundred years. His writings contributed to the community
of gardeners worldwide and advanced the science of horticulture. The
descendants of both Peter and James continued the floral and greenhouse
businesses of their forefathers.

Beginnings in Jersey City

Peter (1822-1890) and James
(c1818 -1857) Henderson were the sons of James, a land steward, and
Agnes (Gilchrist) Henderson in Pathhead, twelve miles south of Edinburgh,
Scotland. When their mother died c. 1830, Peter and James were taken
care of by their sister Ann. Peter's career began at a young age as
he pursued the gardening occupation of his father and maternal grandfather.
He apprenticed under the tutelage of head gardener George Sterling for
four years at age fifteen in the Melville Castle gardens near Dalkeith.
Confident in his knowledge of plant identification, Sterling sent him
to the nearby Ballantyne's Nursery to label herbaceous plants. Henderson's
work in horticulture seemed to be settled when he submitted a herbarium
of native and exotic plants to the Royal Botanical Society of Edinburgh
in a competition in the whole of Great Britain for which he received
a gold medal (Lanman 21).

In the spring of 1843 Peter
Henderson, at age 21, immigrated to the United States to join his older
brother James. Like Peter, James was involved in horticulture having
taken a position to design a multi-acre rose garden on Du Fuskie/Daufuskie
Island, South Carolina, between 1845 and 1847. Peter easily found employment
as a gardener. He worked for George Thorburn's nursery and floral business
in Astoria, Long Island, NY (1843-1844), for Robert Buist's Exotic Nursery
in Philadelphia (1844-45), and designed and constructed a garden for
Charles F. Spang in Pittsburgh (1845-1847). These work experiences expanded
his career training and education in his chosen profession (Lanman 22).

In 1847 James and Peter joined
their resources and moved to what was then Van Vorst Township (later
part of Jersey City). The beginnings of their gardening and seed warehouse
business consisted of three small greenhouses on approximately ten acres
of rented land on Wayne Street near Monmouth Street. From here they
marketed garden vegetables and ornamental plants to sell in New York
City. The Jersey City Directories from 1849 to 1855 list a florist
business called Van Vorst Gardens for James and Peter Henderson together
or for either Peter or James. From 1856, the directories list Peter
Henderson alone as operating a floral shop at 237 Wayne Street.

Van Vorst Park
Early 20th Century postcard
Courtesy, Jersey City Free Public Library

Making his mark on his newly
adopted community, in 1851 Peter Henderson designed the Victorian-style
Van Vorst Park for the town
of Van Vorst close to the floral shop in present-day downtown Jersey
City. The block-square park remains today as one of the main attractions
of well-known historic districts in the city. That same year Peter Henderson
married Emily Gibbons of Bath, England; the couple had three children,
Alfred (1853), Isobel (1855), and Charles (1860). After his wife died
at age 34 in 1868, he married Jean A. Reid, the daughter of an associate.

In 1852, Peter purchased
property from Nicholas Vreeland at Claremont, in Bergen Township near
the present-day Jersey City streets of Arlington, Randolph and Garfield
Avenues. The Vreeland family owned extensive celery farms in the area
and Arlington Avenue was known at that time as Vreeland Avenue.

James Henderson

Detail section of the 1855 Map of Jersey City, Hoboken, and Hudson Cities produced by by William H. Wood, Ciity Surveyor. It shows the boundaries of the James Henderson property in northwestern Greenville.

Courtesy, Jersey City Free Public Library

During the 1850s tragedy
befell the family of James Henderson: his children George and Belle
died, soon followed by the death of his wife Emma (Trapp) Henderson
in childbirth. James was remarried to his sister-in-law Margaret (Trapp)
Henderson and he died in 1857. A nephew, Alfred Henderson, James "was
an unusually popular and genial man" (11). He left his estate to
his wife and son James Henry Henderson (1847-1913). It included two
farms in today's Jersey City. The first was over a nine and one-half
acre property on Bergen Point Plank Road (today Garfield Avenue), once
the homestead of Abraham Vreeland. The second was over an eleven and
one-half acre vegetable truck farm he had recently purchased from Benjamin
Vandervoort for $7,000 on the Old Bergen Road.
It was bounded approximately by the lines of the modern streets known
as Bergen, Culver, Audubon, and West Side Avenues on Bergen Hill at
Greenville.

After his father died, the
ten year old James Henry Henderson apprenticed with his uncle Peter
who tutored him in the greenhouse part of his business. The close family
ties may have led to the common use of "Peter Henderson" as
a recognizable trade name, even though both uncle and nephew operated
their businesses independently. James Henry and later his son Peter
Gilchrist Henderson continued the family-run proprietorship; its truck
farming, greenhouse, and retail florist operations remained in Jersey
City. According to Joseph Kastner, writing for Life magazine in 1947,
the Peter Henderson Company "buys most of its seed from farmers
with whom it has special contracts" (54). This may explain an ongoing
relationship between Peter Henderson & Company on Garfield and Arlington
Avenues and the James Henderson farm on Bergen Avenue until its sale
in 1919.

Peter Gilchrist Henderson
(1879-1946), the son of James Henry Henderson, continued his father's
greenhouse and floral business with a ready market in New York City:
"Year after year in the summer months the large tract of land between
the greenhouse and homestead was a massive field of stock geraniums
displaying acres of continuously blooming red, white and pink geraniums
that brought much attention from flower lovers" (from Peter L.
Henderson, September 10, 1975). One of the most endearing stories about
Peter G. Henderson was that "He gave potted
plants to poor children each Mother's Day so they might have a gift
for their mothers" ("Peter Henderson." New York Times
6 July 1946). Peter Gilchrist Henderson also had political aspirations
but was undoubtedly a better florist than politician. Henderson called
himself an "unbossed Republican." He ran unsuccessfully as
an independent in opposition to the New Jersey Republican Party in the
1916 primary election for governor against the Democrat Walter E. Edge.

After the death of James
Henry Henderson in 1913, the Henderson estate, in separate sale transactions
by the surviving family members of both Peter and James Henderson, was
consolidated under the ownership of the Peter Henderson & Company.
It had used the Hudson Boulevard property for its seed testing houses
where farm seeds were tested for germination. The company sold the James
Henderson property situated west of Hudson (now Kennedy) Boulevard between
Audubon and Culver avenues in 1919 to the Federal Ship Building Co.
of Hoboken. After taking possession of the property, the ship building
company sold certain portions of the land to the State of New Jersey
for a normal school (the site of the Jersey City Normal School, now
New Jersey City
University) in 1922.

Around 1923, the Henderson
lands on the east side of the Boulevard and west of Bergen Avenue were
among the properties being acquired by Jersey City for the construction
of several new schools including : the Home for Crippled Children (now
the A. Harry Moore School)
and the Jersey City Junior School (now Snyder
High School).
The South District Police Precinct Building now occupies
the exact site of the James Henderson homestead which once stood at
187 Bergen Avenue. The Academy I Middle School at 209 Bergen Avenue
(formerly occupied by P.S. #41) stands on that part of the property
that was once covered by the geranium fields.

After these events, Peter
Gilchrist Henderson moved across the street from his old homestead into
a newer house at 192 Bergen Avenue. Purchasing the greenhouses of Henry
Leach at Garfield and Bayview Avenues, he was able to continue to operate
his business. Peter remarried in 1940; but he died several years later
on July 5, 1946. His widow took over, but she eventually sold the property,
closing out the James Henderson branch of the Jersey City greenhouse
and florist enterprise.

Peter Henderson

"Six Good Things in Henderson's Seeds"
is an advertisement for Henderson's plant seeds, 1906.

Courtesy, C.A. Karnoutsos

After establishing his company
in Jersey City, Peter Henderson took advantage of the city's proximity
to the growing sales market in New York City. In 1853 he opened an office
with McIlvain & Orr at 9 John Street where he sold seasonal vegetable
plants. Later he developed a system to grow plants for daily auctions
to promote the sales of house plants and flowers. During the Civil War,
Henderson anticipated postwar growth for the nation and wished to introduce
his brand of market gardening in the United States. There were few rival
seed companies, leaving a wide berth for Henderson to carve his career.
Among the companies founded during the early nineteenth century were
Comstock, Ferre & Co. and Henry A. Deere, who reportedly produced
"the first colored illustration ever used in American catalogs"
(Schapaugh 35). Among his other contemporaries were the W. Altee Burpee
Company that imported flower and vegetable seeds from Europe, Vaughan's
Seed Company, Northrup King & Co., and Joseph Breck & Sons.

In 1862 Henderson moved his
office to the seed store of James Fleming and William Davidson, also
Scotsmen, at 67 Nassau Street. He abandoned the plant auctions and directed
his attention to the expansion of his seed department through the publication
of annual plant catalogues and newspaper advertisements. The following
year,on the New Jersey side, he moved the business to South Bergen on
Arlington (former Vreeland) and Garfield avenues. Here he purchased
ten acres in the vicinity of his home on Arlington Avenue and had twelve
heated and ventilated greenhouses, pits and frames. By 1880 they were
replaced by the "most up-to-date greenhouses," lined on either
side of Randolph Avenue and known nationwide by florists. A one-story
brick building served as Henderson's office (Lanman 30). The transport
of the flowers, plants and mail catalogs were carried out of Jersey
City via its railway and water connections. Railroads like the Erie,
Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Susquehanna and Baltimore and Ohio all
converged in Jersey City. The Morris Canal supported cargo travel of
Henderson's plantings and produce through New Jersey to Pennsylvania
across the Delaware River (Lanman 31).

How Peter Henderson applied
his entrepreneurial skills to "the commercialization of horticulture"
is the subject of a detailed article by Susan Warren Lanman. She relates
how Jersey City was the "ideal venue for market gardening"
(23) for Henderson's future success. Among the factors she explains
are the city's location to nearby New York City with a growing population
and a capacity for the purchase of luxury items such as long-stem roses
and quality vegetables as food staples. At the same time, when Henderson
was developing his business in the 1860s, Jersey City had not yet developed
a full ferry service across the Hudson River nor reclaimed its shoreline
property. Property values were reasonable for the acreage required for
market gardening and greenhouses near an urban population. The nation's
reduced tariff rates on imports made more affordable the purchase of
lower priced window glass from England, Belgium and France for the "portable
glazed wooden frames" used to protect young crops.

Henderson also capitalized
on Jersey City's industrial waste and byproducts that furnished him
with the essential ingredients for commercial farming. He took advantage
of the discarded materials of several Jersey City manufacturers and
reused them in innovative ways. Among the byproducts were the hops refuse
from Lembeck & Betz Eagle Brewing
Company, Cox's Brewery and Palisade Brewery for fertilizer and mulch.
"Sugar house scum" from the New Jersey Refining Company, Havemeyer
Sugar Company and Nathaniel Tooker's Molasses House and stems of cured
tobacco ribs for insecticide from
P. Lorillard Tobacco Factory were put to use in the Henderson gardens.
The city's stockyard operation offered manure and animal bonemeal for
phosphorous that Henderson processed in his own blend of nutrients to
replenish the soil required for various seed and plant cultivation.
Lanman concludes that Jersey City offered a "symbiotic relationship"
between its manufacturers and market gardening (24). The city's immigrant
population also supplied the workers for the labor-intensive industry
and fulfilled what Lanman calls "the classic triangle of land,
labor and capital" for successful entrepreneurs (25). Henderson
employed over one-hundred workers including women for packaging the
vast number of catalog orders.

Peter Henderson & Co. at 35-37 Cortlandt Street in New York City.

Source: From a collage of photographs found in Henderson's Farmers Manual. New York: The Company, 1916.
Courtesy, NY Horticultural Society

In 1865 Henderson bought
out William Davidson's shares of the Nassau Street store and began Henderson
and Fleming. When that partnership dissolved, Peter Henderson &
Company was founded in 1871. Henderson moved into a brick and stone
five-story building at 35-37 Cortlandt Street. The roofline of the facade
had a decorative cornice flanked by large brackets. The name "Peter
Henderson& Co." was etched on a frieze above the store front
of full glass. Large recessed windows defined the four floors above
the store. The building was on the site of the future World Trade Center
towers. Partners in the firm were Peter Henderson with his son Alfred
(1853-1899) and William H. Carson in 1871. Five years later Carson left
the company and James Reid became a partner until his death in 1887,
when Peter's son Charles (1860-1939) became a partner.

The New York City store sold
seeds, plants and bulbs and functioned as an outlet for the greenhouses
in Jersey City. Here Henderson cultivated plants, flowers and vegetables
for the marketing of seeds appropriate to various growing zones in the
United States, setting the standard for the marketing of seed catalogs
and seed testing. He adapted plants from around the world to the American
environment. The zinnia from Mexico soon became familiar in American
gardens. One of his favorites was the pansy, which he cultivated experimentally
until he produced a premier strain in 1884 and later the popular Giant
Butterfly mixture. On the grounds and in the greenhouses close to his
Arlington Avenue home, Henderson produced tens of thousands of beets,
beans, onions, peas, radishes, and three million flowering plants.

Peter Henderson's favorite vegetable was the "White Plume Celery."

Source: Peter Henderson, Gardening For Pleasure: A Guide to the Amateur in the Fruit, Vegetable, and Flower Garden, with Full Directions for the Greenhouse, Conservatory, and Winter Garden. New York, NY: Orange Judd & Company, 1901: 323.

Courtesy, NY Horticultural Society

With the availability of
new plants and their varieties, the company distributed its first catalog
in 1871 with a color illustration of verbenas. Approximately 750,000
catalogs were issued each January for the advancement of commercial
and home gardening. The arrival of the illustrated catalog in the midst
of winter was a harbinger of spring. Each year recipients looked forward
to his improved strains of vegetables and flowers. Examples of his new
offerings for planting were: the Trophy Tomato (1872), Early Summer
Cabbage (1875), Sunset Tea Rose (1880), American Wonder pea (1882),
Premier Pansy and White Plume Celery (1884), Henderson's Sugar Corn,
New Rose Celery (1885), New York Lettuce (forerunner of Iceberg lettuce)
and Palmetto Asparagus (1886), American Banner Rose, Highland Pansy,
Butterfly Pansy, and Trocadero (Big Boston) Lettuce (1887), and Dinsmore
Rose (1888). His last major commercial advance for vegetable growers
was the Henderson Bush Lima Bean (1889) that no longer required support
poles for cultivation.

The catalogs shared with
gardeners Henderson's latest horticultural studies and techniques serving
as instructional guides. The five-color lithograph plates made the catalogs
popular collectibles and pleased the casual browser to whom it imparted
the themes that home gardening benefited the economy, conservation and
beautification. His motto "everything for the garden" encapsulated
the model for today's marketing practice of one-stop shopping through
advertising in his catalogs (Scripps 8). It was a market strategy for
all gardening supplies, tools and even the Henderson Featherweight Lawn
Mower, designed by Henderson himself, to be purchased through the Henderson
catalogs.

Henderson's writings recorded
his studies and experiments and reveal his desire to share his work
with professional and recreational gardeners. He wrote his first article
for C.M. Hovey's Magazine of Horticulture (Boston). Journal articles
followed in Gardener's Monthly (Philadelphia); Horticulturist
(New York), and American Agriculturist, among others. His first
book was Gardening for Profit. It was known by gardeners as
the "bible" for fifty years that Henderson claimed he wrote
in one hundred hours. Published in 1866 (revised in 1874 and 1886) by
Orange Judd of the American Agriculturist, it was the first book
with "straightforward, lucid instructions on market gardening,"
writes Lanman (32). In the "Introduction" of Gardening
for Profit, Henderson explains his foray into writing his books:
"I have some pride . . . that I had a working experience
in all departments of gardening, from my earliest boyhood, and even
to-day am far more at home in its manual operations than in literature,
and have been induced to write the following pages at the repeated solicitations
of friends and correspondents, to whose inquiries relative to my commercial
gardening, my time will no long allow me to reply individually"
(vii). Gardening for Profit was also reportedly significant for
encouraging the profitability of market gardening to Civil War veterans,
especially in the South (Becker 26).

The popularity of Gardening
for Profit encouraged Henderson to publish a number of works but
did not replace his correspondence to would-be planters. A companion
book to Gardening for Profit was Practical Floriculture: A
Guide to the Successful Cultivation of Florists' Plants for the Amateur
and Professional Florist (1869) to promote commercial gardening.
Gardening for Pleasure (1875) encouraged the home gardener to
grow flowers, vegetable and fruits. In a later edition of the book (1901),
there is an illustration of Henderson's "White Plume Celery"
that he introduced in 1884. He extolls its virtues as "unsurpassed
in flavor" and describes how it "excels all other vegetables
as an ornament for the dinner table, its graceful white leaves resembling
somewhat an ostrich feather" (322-324). Henderson's enthusiasm
for the celery plant, he writes, is that "If I am fitted to instruct
on the cultivation of any vegetable, it is this, as for many years I
have cultivated nearly half a million roots annually, and this experience
has resulted in greatly simplifying the operation" (318). Henderson
recognized and took advantage of the suitable growing conditions for
celery on his grounds near the Greenville section of Jersey City, an
area that had once been commonly called "Celeryville" by local
residents.

Henderson's Hand Book
of Plants (1881) was a gardening encyclopedia that included botanical
classifications and propagation of ornamental plants. Garden and
Farm Topics (1884) was a compilation of forty-three previously-published
essays and addresses to the New York Horticultural Society or the National
Association of Nurserymen, Florists and Seedsmen. His last publication
was Henderson's Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture (1889);
it was a revised and expanded version of his first handbook. He was
said to have written some 175,000 letters to home gardeners who sought
his advice about the planting and care of their vegetable and flowers.
Imagery of his products in lavish garden settings or in close-ups, neat
rows of his plantings and acres of greenhouses appear in his publications
as photographic advertising of his commercial success.

To promote his New York trade,
Henderson frequently entered his plants and flowers in garden competitions.
He showed his potato at the fall exhibition of the New York Horticultural
Society held at Madison Square Garden in 1879. He also displayed a variety
of grapes and received awards for his seedling potato and collection
of tomatoes. In 1887 Henderson sponsored his first annual plant and
flower show at the Cortlandt Street store. It drew crowds of women who
admired the display of flowers such as geraniums, dahlias, and especially
the gladiolas of 3,000 to 4,000 varieties and the insect trapping "cruel
plant." Following the exhibit, the plants were dispersed among
the local hospitals.

Henderson's prodigious amount
of work is attributed to his often-mentioned sixteen-hour days. He is
described as "a tall, broad-shouldered man, erect in bearing, who
walked and moved rapidly" (Becker 27). He abstained from liquor
and tobacco and maintained a daily regimen to commute to work. He walked
to the Jersey City boat landing for the short ferry ride to New York
City and from the New York ferry slip to his Cortlandt Street store
three blocks away. He divided his time between the store in lower Manhattan
and the greenhouses in Jersey City and reportedly worked on his books
and catalogs during noon and in the hours before he retired. No task
was too menial; he labored among his employees, who were expected to
work a sixty-hour week, on cuttings, potting, staking and labeling of
plants with hand-tooled cedar wood tallies. In recognition of the large
number of Irish workers in his employ, Henderson granted a holiday on
St. Patrick's day; the other holiday was on New Year's day (Lanman 37).

His inspiration for horticultural
experimentation came from his contemporaries the naturalist Charles
Darwin and geneticist Gregor Mendel, whose works he admired and incorporated
into his own approach to his specialization. Among his experiments was
to sow seeds in the soil rather than germinate them in cloth as was
the usual method of seedsmen (Scripps 7). He was a friend of steel magnate
Andrew Carnegie, also a Scotsman, with whom he identified from a similar
immigrant experience and zest for productivity in the American marketplace.
He was also particularly fond of the notable late-nineteenth century
preacher and theologian Reverend Henry Ward Beecher of the Plymouth
Church in Brooklyn with whom he shared gardening interests.

Civic-minded, but not directly
involved in local politics, Henderson was a member of the Lincoln Association
of Jersey City, the Society of American Florists, the New York Florists'
Club, Seed Dealers' Association of the United States, Bergen Volunteer
Fire Department, Engine No. 5, and chairman of the finance committee
of the Bergen Improvement Association. According to Robert F. Becker,
"He helped reorganize the New York Horticultural Society and served
on its Executive Committee. At Society meetings he was a frequent exhibitor
of new and unusual plant material, helping to educate fellow members"
(77). Becker further captures Henderson's drive to bring others along
to the new findings he discovered: "Henderson was not afraid to
challenge the horticultural theory and practice of his day. He was an
experimenter and a keen scientific observer who always wrote from firsthand
experiences. He thought in practical terms and, when discussing commercial
production and marketing, wrote from personal observation" (77).

On January 17, 1890, Peter
Henderson died after a brief illness at his home on Arlington Avenue
in Jersey City. He was buried from the First Presbyterian Church on
Emory Street and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
At the time of his death, name of Peter Henderson was synonymous with
gardening: "His was thought to be the largest, and was certainly
the best appointed establishment of the kind in the world" (Jersey
Journal 17 January 1890).

Peter Henderson owned a substantial
amount of property as specified in his will probated April 29, 1890.
He left to his wife Jean their property and home at Arlington and Bramhall
Avenues, eleven houses and lots in Jersey City on Ocean, Madison, and
Jackson Avenue as well royalties from his publications. To his daughter
Isobel Henderson Floyd, he bequeathed eighteen houses and lots. The
Cortlandt Street property in New York City was given to his sons Alfred
and Charles as was the Jersey City plant and florist property in the
vicinity of Arlington and Randolph Avenues.

Henderson Tradition

Peter Henderson's two sons
Alfred and Charles each succeeded in turn as president of the gardening
business. Alfred Henderson, Peter Henderson's first son, became president
in 1890 after his father's death. One of his first business decisions
was to incorporate the company in the State of New Jersey, with its
principal office at 15 Exchange Place, Jersey City, on August 6, 1890,
at a valuation of $500,000.

Alfred Henderson also contributed
to the family business his talent for writing, advertising and promotion.
He published the book Peter Henderson Gardener, Author, Merchant:
A Memoir (1890), a biographical tribute to his father within the
same year of his death. Alfred also expanded the business with his novel
promotions and advertisements. In 1893, he prepared lawns for display
at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago to demonstrate the Henderson
Lawn Grass Seed and received a gold medal for the product.

The Henderson Company updated
and advanced the company's trademark advertisement of a neatly dressed
gentleman gardener with apron and wheelbarrow and variations of the
slogan "Henderson Seeds are Tested Seeds." The gardener, often
assumed to be Peter Henderson, was actually a clerk at the Henderson
firm. The trademark image accompanied advertisements in catalogs and
newspapers, like the New York Times, for decades.

On the early morning of August
20, 1899, the Cortlandt Street store suffered a damaging three-alarm
fire that started in the sub-basement where flower bulbs and seeds were
stored. While the fire was contained in the cellar, twelve firemen were
overcome by the smoke and gas emanating from the broken gas pipes. Only
fifteen days after the fire, Alfred, age fifty, died at his home in
Spring Lake, NJ. It is said that the burden of the damages of approximately
$100,000 caused by the fire accelerated his brief illness after the
fire.

Charles Henderson, Peter
Henderson's second son, became the company's next president in 1899.
Young Charles had attended the Hasbrouck Institute, Jersey City's prestigious
preparatory school. He worked in the Jersey City greenhouses from an
early age, developed an expertise in horticulture and eventually headed
the greenhouse department. Charles published horticultural books such
as Henderson's Picturesque Gardens and Ornamental Gardening
(1901, 1908).

During his tenure as president,
Charles Henderson expanded the business and received many awards for
Henderson products at events such as the Lewis-Clark Exposition in 1905.
An issue of Henderson's Farmers Manual (1916) includes photographs
of the Henderson three-story warehouses and the seed cleaning plant
located on Garfield Avenue. Here orders were filled, grass seeds were
mixed, peas and beans were sorted, and potato cellars maintained in
the basement. Charles Henderson writes in the manual: "Our seed
storehouses in Jersey City have a capacity of 750,000 bushels, and are
now filled with seeds of the choicest quality, and the highest germinative
[sic] power. We test our seeds, both in our testing houses, and also
in 'mother earth' the natural way, at our Trial Grounds 60 acres in
extent, at Hudson Boulevard, Jersey City, and Hackensack, N.J."
(1). He also faced a strike in September 1917 by seventy-three employees
over hours and wages. Putting pressure on the company was the loss of
workers to the military due to World War I. The stalemate resulted in
moving to other sites such as Redbank, NJ, and changing the Jersey City
operation to one of storage in both the warehouses and greenhouses at
the Arlington Avenue location.

Charles Henderson retired
in July 1919 and was succeeded by his nephew Peter Henderson II (1888-1944);
he was elected president of Peter Henderson & Company and served
in that role until 1939 when he became chairman of the board. A grandson
of the founder Peter Henderson and son of Alfred Henderson, Peter Henderson
II graduated from Yale University in 1912 and started to work at the
seed firm while his uncle Charles Henderson was president; he served
in the Army Air Corps during World War I.

Working with Peter Henderson
II was his cousin Howard M. Henderson (1891-1930); he was the son of
Charles Henderson and became the general manager and vice president
in 1920. He had attended Cornell University where he studied horticulture
and agriculture. He expanded the business with the production of Golf
and Sports Turf. In 1924 the company collaborated with Westinghouse
Lamp Company in an experiment on the use of electric light to force
the growth of 500 flower bulbs using 8-watt Mazda lamps in reflectors
for seasonal Easter plants like tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, narcissi
and Easter lilies.

The Depression years were
difficult for the company. Howard Henderson was tragically killed in
an automobile accident in California. The estate of Peter Henderson,
represented by Charles Henderson, began to sell various properties in
Jersey City including the four two-story dwellings at 1028-1034 Garfield
Avenue to the Long Island Realty Co. in 1934. The following year, property
on Arlington and Randolph avenues to Garfield Avenue and a corner plot
at Arlington Avenue at Grand Street were sold to the Dorsey Realty Syndicate.
In turn, the property was sold to the Arlington Park Corporation for
housing. Included in this parcel was the original Victorian frame mansion
of the Henderson patriarch on the west side of Arlington Avenue and
trial grounds from Arlington Avenue to Grand Street.

The company was rewarded
for its perseverance during the Depression as by 1939 it experienced
a rise in sales, particularly in ornamental gardening. In the late 1940s,
it was a nationwide mail-order business with a large market share of
the gardening trade. The company listed its headquarters at 1010 Garfield
Avenue in Jersey City and kept its warehouses on Garfield. The original
offices and warehouse remained at Cortlandt Street in New York City,
and seed farms were located Redbank, NJ, and elsewhere.

When Peter Henderson II died
in 1944, he would be the last Henderson to head Peter Henderson &
Company. His two sons were in the military, and a non-family member
Harry Candy, who had joined the company in 1909 and rose through the
ranks, became president in 1939. He was succeeded in 1946 by John A.
Fieseler, a long time employee since 1903. Through the war years and
after, the company tried to maintain the standards of founder Peter
Henderson. The popularity of victory gardens for growing food during
World War II placed such demands on the company to fill an unprecedented
number of orders that it required a temporary stoppage of other aspects
of the business.

In 1947 during the centennial
year of Henderson's work, the company received the gold medal of achievement
from the Horticultural Society of New York. It grossed about $1,500,000
annually with a net profit of ten percent. Several horticultural magazines
ran feature articles about Henderson's contribution. Joseph Kastner
for Life magazine describes the Cortlandt Street store: "At
the store counters gray-haired clerks weigh out bulk seed in scales
that were there when the store opened in 1871. In the offices bookkeepers
still sit on high stools in tiny cubicles. In the flower department
skilled maiden ladies fill each packet of seed by hand, using little
ivory measuring spoons of different sizes for different-sized seeds"(55).

Holding onto outmoded practices
could not sustain the company for long. Economic pressures and competition
from other seed companies challenged its survival. One appraisal is
that it had lost the forward-looking approach of its founder: "Unfortunately,
lacking the innovation and progressive influence of Peter Henderson,
the company failed to adjust to the changing business requirements of
the mid-20th century, continuing to do business by traditional methods,
in antiquated offices and warehouses" (Becker 26).

In an attempt to save the
business in 1951, it merged with the Stumpp & Walter Company of
Morristown, NJ, a seed firm known for sales to golf clubs and retail
stores. The company closed in 1953; however, the work and legacy of
Henderson remains. According
to Robert F. Becker of The American Horticulturist, "Henderson
was an extraordinary teacher, leader, and guide, who helped pave the
way for horticulture to emerge as a true science and to keep pace with
the age of modern technology" (28). He established a nationwide
reputation for ornamental gardening and seed catalogs that was unprecedented
for its time.

Few
men, if any, have done so much to simplify and improve methods
of handling plants for commercial purposes. His greenhouses were
an object lesson to many visitors, his methods were widely copied,
and his business successes were the goal of ambitious market gardeners
and florists, among whom he was for many years the most commanding
figure.by Wilhelm
Miller in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture by Liberty Hyde
Bailey (1947).

"A Flower That
Catches Flies." New York Times 11 August 1887.
"Alfred Henderson." The Evening Journal (Jersey City),
6 September 1899.
"Alfred Henderson." New York Times 6 September 1899.
"Autumn Fruits and Vegetables." New York Times 16 September
1879.
Becker, Robert F. "Henderson, Peter." In Birnbaum, Charles
A. and Julie K. Fix, eds. Pioneers of American Landscape Design II:
An Annotated Bibliography. Washington, D.C.:U.S. Department of the
Interior, 1995: 76-79.
_____. "Peter Henderson Plant Pioneer." American Horticulturist
74:12 (December 1995):24-30.
"Centenary Celebration.' Gardeners' Chronicle of America
51 (January 1947): 17.
"Centenary of Seeds." New York Times 12 January 1947.
"Charles Henderson." New York Times 30 April 1939.
Coulter, F.C. "Peter Henderson Pioneer." House and Garden
91 (January 1947): 90, 92, 95.
"Fire in a Seed Store." New York Times 20 August 1899.
"Firm Sells Seed 100 Years Here." New York Times 16
January 1947.
From Peter L. Henderson, ed. (Haworth, NJ) to J. Owen Grundy (Jersey
City historian), September 10, 1975. Joan Lovero Collection, New Jersey
Room. Jersey City Public Library. Henderson is the great grandson of
James Henderson and great, great nephew of Peter Henderson founder of
Peter Henderson & Company.
_____. September 19,1975.
Henderson, Alfred. Peter Henderson Gardener, Author, Merchant: A
Memoir. New York: Press of McIlroy & Emmet, 1890.
Henderson, Peter. Garden and Farm Topics. New York, NY: Peter
Henderson & Co., 1884. (Portrait included).
_____. Gardening for Profit; A Guide to the Successful Cultivation
of the Market and Family Garden. New York, NY: Orange Judd &
Company, 1865.
_____. Gardening for Pleasure. A Guide to the Amateur in the Fruit,
Vegetable, and Flower Garden, with Full Directions for the Greenhouse,
Conservatory, and Window Garden. New York, NY: Orange Judd &
Company, 1901.
_____. Henderson's Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture.
New York, NY: Peter Henderson & Company, 1890.
_____. Practical Floriculture; A Guide to the Successful Cultivation
of Florist's Plants, for the Amateur and Professional Florist. New
York, NY: Orange Judd & Company, 1874.

Acknowledgment:
Staff of the Guarini Library of NJCU, particularly Michele Hoban and
James Brown of the Inter-Library Loan Department; resources of the Joan
D. Lovero Collection, New Jersey Room, Jersey City Free Public Library
and assistance of Department Head Cynthia Harris and John Beekman; also,
resources of the New York Historical Society, and assistance of Katherine
Powis of New York Horticultural Society.